1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a harness protector comprising a plurality of division protectors fittingly interconnected, and more particularly to a structure of interconnection fitting of the division protectors forming the harness protector.
2. Related Art
A wire harness for installation on a mobile body such as an automobile is received in a harness protector having a generally U-shaped or channel-shaped cross-section, and in this condition the harness protector is fixed to a vehicle body, thereby installing the wire harness along a predetermined path. Referring to the fixing of the harness protector, stud bolts are fixed respectively to a plurality of portions of the vehicle body by welding, and are arranged along the installation path. The harness protector has a plurality of fixing portions each having a fixing hole for the passage of the stud bolt therethrough. These fixing portions are so arranged as to correspond respectively to the positions of the stud bolts. The stud bolts are passed respectively through the fixing holes, and then nuts are threaded respectively on the stud bolts, thereby fixedly securing the harness protector to the vehicle body.
The stud bolts are fixed to the vehicle body by welding as described above. Therefore, depending on the accuracy of a welding operation, some stud bolts are often deviated or offset slightly from their proper positions. Therefore, in the harness protector, each fixing portion is formed into such a structure as to absorb such a positional deviation (see, for example, JP-A-7-310721 Publication mentioned below).
Incidentally, the range over which a wire harness is held in a harness protector is often long, and in this case, if an attempt is made to produce a long harness protector corresponding to such long range, a mold for molding the harness protector becomes large in size, and also a molding machine becomes large in scale. Therefore, usually, this procedure is not adopted, and instead there is commonly used means for interconnecting a plurality of division protectors in a fitting manner.
In the harness protector comprising the plurality of division protectors fittingly interconnected, there are occasions when it is difficult to absorb a positional deviation of the stud bolt merely by the structure of the fixing portion for passing the stud bolt therethrough. Therefore, this is a problem.
And besides, in the harness protector, the shape of the fixing portion is influenced by the shape of the vicinities of a mounting portion of the vehicle body, and therefore it is difficult to provide the complicated positional deviation-absorbing structure, which would affect the mounting, at the fixing portion. This is also a problem.